We can’t trust a word they write …

 

 

It’s been a week since the Queen died. The public mourning and the preparations for the funeral are the main news, in print (link) and online. There was one news item though which is, in a horrible way, a prime example for the decline of proper journalism in our country.  In the following I’ll examine the report, to document for the record how an unsuspecting public is being manipulated.

Yesterday afternoon a friend drew my attention to an article in the DT. It had the title (my emphasis):

 “Queen Elizabeth puts her people first in plans for ‘extraordinary’ funeral – NHS doctors and nurses to take leading role in procession that Buckingham Palace hopes will ‘unite people across the globe” (paywalled link)

The time stamp for this article is now 9.38pm on 15th September. I received the link yesterday afternoon, via email, at 4.38pm. Clearly, some editing must have taken place but that is now impossible to find out. Let’s look at the actual text with which this DT report begins. The emphasis, as for all the following quotes fro MSM reports on this issue 

“The funeral of Queen Elizabeth II will see NHS doctors and nurses given the honour of walking in front of her coffin, it has emerged as Buckingham Palace revealed details of a “fitting tribute to an extraordinary reign”.” (paywalled link)

Any normal person with a grasp of the English language would assume that this relates to the procession from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey. Any normal person would assume that this means NHS personnel would walk before the coffin, to Westminster Abbey. This text is still at the top of that article.

Unsurprisingly, readers expressed their outrage in the comments – I believe they are accessible for non-subscribers – and were not mincing their words. This morning, I looked into the ‘history’ of this announcement. I found that the first report on this subject came out in iNews at 1.13pm yesterday:

“NHS staff will take part in the Queen’s funeral procession as it begins its journey to Windsor following the State Funeral on Monday. The doctors and nurses will join members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, officers from the Police Service of Northern Ireland and members of the British Armed Forces in the procession after the funeral service at Westminster Abbey.” (link)

In their own report on the funeral service the BBC described the order of events at length. Scrolling down quite a bit, we read:

“After the Abbey service, the Queen’s coffin will be carried in a further procession to Wellington Arch – led by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and members of NHS staff. It will then be conveyed to Windsor by road, before a committal service takes place at 16:00 at St George’s Chapel, led by the Dean of Windsor and with a congregation including the Royal Family and some of the Queen’s personal staff.” (link)

This article was published ‘15hours ago’, at about the same time as the original article in the DT. Both these reports came out about two hours after the one in iNews. In the early hours of this morning, The Times updated their live blog on the funeral arrangements which now includes this news item. Scrolling down quite a bit we read:

“There will also be modern touches, as the procession from the abbey to Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner will include representatives of the National Health Service.” (link, paywalled)

Except for the ‘hurrah: Our Sacred Cow will be represented at the funeral’ in iNews, it is perfectly clear when and where NHS ‘doctors and nurses’ will take their place in the procession: after the service. Even a ‘media trainee’ , tasked with copying from other news articles, ought to have understood this.

Even more surprising is that there’s another article in the DT, timestamped 8.18pm 15th September, written by the same DT editor, where we read:

“As Buckingham Palace released more details of the funeral arrangements on Thursday, it emerged that Mounties of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police will have the honour of leading the coffin procession through London as it is taken from Westminster Abbey to Wellington Arch to begin its journey to Windsor.” (paywalled link)

Did nobody in the august newsrooms of the DT notice the discrepancy? How can NHS personnel ‘lead’ the procession when it’s the Canadian Mounties who do? Were they all drunk, after a liquid lunch? Or was there a more sinister aim, namely to sow discord and rile up the people with this first report? If the aim was to show how much the late Queen cared for the NHS which must therefore be sacrosanct then it backfired, as the comments show. 

I’ve used this ‘exercise’ in analysing our MSM because it perfectly documents, for the record, that we cannot trust anything they publish without doing our own research, even if it’s just trying to find out what was actually said and when.

It’s not just the copying from each other, it’s not just the blatant grabbing for click-bait headlines – it’s the whole unedifying ‘reporting’ which doesn’t deserve that name since ‘opinion’ and above all nudges and government propaganda have taken the place of factual reports.

This whole unedifying MSM edifice has become so utterly untrustworthy that more and more people are abandoning the MSM. Even now, on the most important state occasion for decades, these ‘reporters’ and ‘editors’ cannot help themselves but have to push propaganda.

It’s the British public, so despised by the Westminster MSM, who have been showing their dignity while paying respect to our Queen. That is the real story which you won’t find reported in the MSM.



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